THE SCOTS PINE 57 
The Little Firs—the self-sown Firs—that yet in days to be, 
Shall lift plumed heads against the sky— 
Shall stretch red, slender trunks on high— 
Shall stand, each one a Forest Tree. 
If all the people in Great Britain, who only knew 
one tree in the world by sight, in and out of season, 
and were, under penalty, enforced to sally forth, 
point out, and give a name to that tree which of all 
others they knew best, some 90 per cent., we think, 
would pitch upon the P. Sylvestris, and in so doing 
they would probably when they spoke of it—as did | 
the poet Mason—employ the misnomer Scotch Fir, 
in direct defiance of all Scotsmen’s susceptibilities 
and all arboricultural authorities, who very properly 
have impressed us with the desirability of alluding 
to it as the Scots Pine. It is a tree that, if we were 
to write about at length, we could not say too much 
in its praise and honour, and it is a tree that if we 
were to try and explain we could not say too little, 
for there is no need to hammer on at that which we 
all are aware is driven home. 
We could not, in our desire to give it glorification, 
rise to the height of the occasion, and we could not, 
if we tried, hope to reach to the depth of its historical 
antiquity with us. 
It is too well known and appreciated by all to 
need further dissertation upon here. 
The name implies its origin, and the whereabouts 
of its localities of its native heath. 
From the forests and Highlands, 
We come, we come, 
once wrote Shelley, and these words tell the tale of 
their indigenous home, 
